Summer time

So, what do you do in the summer time? My daughter was complaining the other day because I told her that she was still going to be getting up fairly early, she needed to make her bed and pick up her room before coming out for breakfast.  She told me that summer time was when you are supposed to sleep in.  I guess I’m a mean mom and that isn’t my idea of summer.  I figure the kids are around and they are getting old enough to be a real help to me, so I’m going to teach them what it’s like to work.  I’m not sure who will get the bigger lesson, them learning to work, or me learning to teach them.

Now don’t get me wrong, we do have fun during the summer.  In fact, the kids and I sat down and made out a list of things that we would like to do this summer.  Some of those are things that we know are definitely going to happen, and some might happen.  The list included things like swimming lessons (they are currently taking those), my daughter’s baptism, going to my nephew’s birthday party.  Those ones are pretty set but then we included things like going camping, fishing, visiting some close touristy sites like the ice caves and the Hagerman Fossil Beds.  We will see how many of those we get done this summer.

So, we have set some new routines this summer.  They are very similar to the ones I set up for Spring Break.  I’m discovering as my kids get older what works now may not work then, so we may have to tweak this as time goes on.  I get up early and get my computer time in.  I have discovered that when kids are up, the computer goes off unless we need it for something like to look up a recipe or something, otherwise it is too big of a distraction.  So, once kids are up, I get to work making breakfast while they get dressed, make their beds and clean up their rooms.  After breakfast they each have a room that they are in charge of and they spend a few minutes cleaning that room.  The first day we picked rooms it took quite a while to get the rooms straightened and organized, but now it doesn’t take them very long at all.  Once their room is tidy we will usually all work together on something.  If the weather is nice we work outside.  We put a new house in the middle of an alfalfa field a couple of years ago and there is still a lot of work to do around the outside, along with taking care of the chickens and the garden.  So we have weeding, mowing, spreading gravel, picking up the lawn so I can mow, and hanging laundry out to dry on the clothes line.

Right now we have swimming lessons so after a little work we head to those, then lunch and come home for some free time/play time.  Swimming lessons will be over after this week and our family work time will increase.  I’m a little glad for that because we have a lot of projects to work on outside.  For free time the kids will often play outside on the swings, or in “Terabithia”.  Terabitha is an area of our yard where some big trees grow and shade one of our little irrigation ditches, so the kids built a bridge over the water, it’s the “bridge to Terabithia”.  They can climb the trees and have even built little forts over there.  For her birthday last year my almost 8 year old got a pair of little pruners and she will cut off the little dead branches.  She will probably help me prune some of our orchard later this summer with those little pruners.

If the weather is less nice then we spend a lot of time reading books.  One of the favorite places for my kids to spend their time is the library.  We have just a small little community library, but we also got a library card to a bigger library in the town where we do most of our shopping.  At that library the limit is 50 books per card and we’ve come close to bringing that many home before.  The kids pick out their own books, with me making sure that there isn’t anything I don’t want in them.  They do pretty good for the most part.  My daughters are also learning some handicrafts.  The oldest is learning to crochet.  Her sister just younger is learning to make things on a knitting loom.  I love to do yarn crafts so we all spend a little time working on our latest project.  It has been so fun sharing these skills with my kids.

At bed time after we read scriptures and pray as a family they all go and lay in their beds and I sit in the hall between the two bedrooms and read a story of my choosing to them.  We’ve done a lot of classics.  We went through some fairy tales, we read Pollyanna, some Nancy Drew, and currently I am reading them The Secret Garden (one of my all time favorites).  I have a whole list of books that I want to read to them.  This helps them unwind, and sometimes it brings up topics for conversation. 

So what do you think?  Am I a mean mom for making them get up early and sticking to a schedule?  I don’t think so.  My kids are happier, the house feels more welcoming and comfortable, and it’s easier for me to be a good Mommy.